11 September 1973 (8)

Consortium News bericht:

'Pinochet's Death Spares the Bush Family.
By Robert Parry.

Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s death on Dec. 10 means the Bush Family can
breathe a little bit easier, knowing that criminal proceedings
against Chile’s notorious dictator can no longer implicate his
longtime friend and protector, former President George H.W. Bush.

Although Chilean investigations against other defendants may
continue, the cases against Pinochet end with his death of a heart
attack at the age of 91. Pinochet’s death from natural causes also
marks a victory for world leaders, including George H.W. and George
W. Bush, who shielded Pinochet from justice over the past three decades.

The Bush Family’s role in the Pinochet cover-up began in 1976 when
then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush diverted investigators away from
Pinochet’s guilt in a car bombing in Washington that killed political
rival Orlando Letelier and an American, Ronni Moffitt.

The cover-up stretched into the presidency of George W. Bush when he
sidetracked an FBI recommendation to indict Pinochet in the Letelier-
Moffitt murders.

Over those intervening 30 years, Pinochet allegedly engaged in a
variety of illicit operations, including terrorism, torture, murder,
drug trafficking, money-laundering and illicit arms shipments –
sometimes with the official collusion of the U.S. government.

In the 1980s, when George H.W. Bush was Vice President, Pinochet’s
regime helped funnel weapons to the Nicaraguan contra rebels and to
Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, an operation that also implicated then-CIA
official Robert M. Gates, who will be the next U.S. Secretary of
Defense.

When Pinochet faced perhaps his greatest risk of prosecution – in
1998 when he was detained in London pending extradition to Spain on
charges of murdering Spanish citizens – former President George H.W.
Bush protested Pinochet’s arrest, calling it “a travesty of justice”

and joining in a successful appeal to the British courts to let
Pinochet go home to Chile.

Once Pinochet was returned to Chile, the wily ex-dictator employed a
legal strategy of political obstruction and assertions of ill health
to avert prosecution. Until his death, he retained influential
friends in the Chilean power structure and in key foreign capitals,
especially Washington.'

Lees verder: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/121106.html

En van het TransNational Institute kreeg ik deze email:

'Pinochet’s legacy: no dictator should have legal impunity
For immediate release.
Amsterdam.

The legacy of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet should be a renewed fight against impunity for human rights violations, according to the Transnational Institute, whose former director Orlando Letelier was murdered by agents of the Pinochet regime in 1976.
"Pinochet’s death brings a premature end to the struggle to see him brought to justice for his crimes, but his name lives on in infamy" said Fiona Dove, director of the Transnational Institute (TNI). "His legacy should be that no ruler should have legal impunity for human rights abuses perpetrated under their watch."
On 21 September 1976, agents of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet detonated a car bomb in Washington DC that killed Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean cabinet minister who was TNI director at the time, along with Ronni Moffitt, a colleague from the Institute of Policy Studies.
The Letelier and Moffitt murders were among over 3,000 deaths and disappearances conducted by the Pinochet regime. Although Pinochet’s death deprives the victims of justice, the efforts of family members, lawyers, artists, activists, elected officials, journalists and others in Chile and internationally have ensured that the dictator’s name is now synonymous with the human rights violations committed during his rule.
Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1998 destroyed the illusion that ‘sovereign immunity’ could protect the dictator from accountability for his crimes. International human rights activism also helped galvanise the Chilean legal system, resulting in several cases against him.
The Pinochet Precedent: online dossier http://www.tni.org/pinochet/index.htm
Orlando Letelier: online dossier http://www.tni.org/letelier/index.htm
Further details
Fiona Dove, Director
+ 31 20 662 66 08
Oscar Reyes, Communications Officer
+44 7739 827 208, mailto:oscar@tni.org